I only know the half-dozen big hits from The Monkees, so most of these songs were completely fresh. Lots of fun all around, my votes came down to these three:154 - Hey, Hey, We're the Monks Concepts like this always get me, great execution.La Fea - Mommy & Daddy Love the drums especially on this, but an exceptional song choice too. Going to check out the original later today.Cmn ineed yr hlp w/ Emily Jancetic - Alternate Title True to your own great sound (again) and another WOW song to work with.

Stuff about songs I was on:Theme For The Monkeys - I originally did this joke as part of an improv video thing in high school. Drums/screeching sampled from the monkey at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nge1GT51QoEMary Mary (Math Patrol) - Math Patrol weren't sure what to do for a Monkees tribute, but when Brian remembered the Run-D.M.C. take on this song, we thought it might be cool to take a fresh look at the theme: We may not know why Mary was buggin' in 1988, but we had a good idea why Mary would be buggin' in 2017. Props to Brian for finding all the samples and making them work. - I Can Make You HappyI love all the Scooby Doo chase songs, so jumped at the chance to put this one together. I hummed, whistled and sang it all month, and my 6yo daughter Cozy caught on and wanted to sing it together. We had to distract her little sister after the first takes were ruined by loud knocks on the door where we were recording, but it was fun. It was a big musical challenge for me, the original Davy Jones version has some great bass counterpoint and the song itself has some quick chord changes. I totally fudged both. I've got a long way to go on drum programming too, just used the BeatMaker app I've had on my phone for years that has a very limited set of sounds built in, but I didn't make time to get something better lined up. Still, a joy to work on this one.

Was pretty fun! I didn't expect to win on a theme-stretching concept, but I'm pretty happy with the made up Monks song. I ended up voting for Keith Klingensmith, Nonagon, and La Fea 'Mommy & Daddy' but had several runner up votes: even narrowing it down to 5 would have been hard.